The Tears of the Black Man

Alain Mabanckou, Dominic Thomas

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780253035868
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Critica letteraria africana

In The Tears of the Black Man, award-winning author Alain Mabanckou explores what it means to be black in the world today. Mabanckou confronts the long and entangled history of Africa, France, and the United States as it has been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and their legacy today. Without ignoring the injustices and prejudice still facing blacks, he distances himself from resentment and victimhood, arguing that focusing too intensely on the crimes of the past is limiting. Instead, it is time to ask: Now what? Embracing the challenges faced by ethnic minority communities today, The Tears of the Black Man looks to the future, choosing to believe that the history of Africa has yet to be written and seeking a path toward affirmation and reconciliation.

1

The Black Man’s Tears

Dear Boris,

Relations between France and Africa are difficult to explain. Your school textbooks will no doubt have taught you more on this subject than I will ever be able to, but it is safe to say that this long history has been marked by dramatic ups and downs. There are those who will try and convince you to bear a grudge against France, to blame her for all the suffering. As for me, I’m with those who believe that Africa’s history has yet to be written. This will require patience and serenity, and one should avoid tipping the scales in favor of a particular version of history. Others call for a more vigorous response from Africa itself, and since the dark continent is still considered the cradle of humanity, these same people will try and convince you in their zeal that Europe should just give in and agree to reparations as a remedy for all the damage they inflicted on us during the centuries of slavery, the decades of colonization, and God knows what else.

In The Tears of the White Man, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner talked about the “self-loathing” felt by Europeans, the feeling of culpability that comes from the self-hatred and contempt they experience when they look back on their history, especially colonialism and capitalism.¹ Their bad conscience distorts their perception of the Third World, redirecting them toward leftist, naive, Manichean views. This is their way of repenting and seeking salvation. Rather than being continually filled with a futile sense of repentance, Bruckner urges Europeans to be proud of their accomplishments.

Slightly altering the philosopher’s title, I believe there is ample evidence today of what I would describe as “the tears of the black man.” Tears that are becoming increasingly noisy and driving some Africans to attribute all the continent’s sufferings and misfortunes to the encounter with Europe. These tearful Africans relentlessly fuel hatred toward Whites, as if vengeance could somehow erase the history of ignominy and give us back the alleged pride Europe violated. But those who blindly hate Europe are just as sick as those who cling to a blind love for a bygone, imaginary Africa, one that somehow survived the centuries peacefully, seamlessly, until that fateful day when the Whites came along and turned their perfect world upside down.

These tearful Blacks claim to be followers of Marcus Garvey, who initiated the Back to Africa movement for the descendants of slaves, or of the great Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop, who argued relentlessly that ancient Egypt had been populated by Black people and that Western philosophers had plundered African thought shamelessly since Antiquity. In their state of trance, they tirelessly dwell on the key ideas of “black consciousness” and of the “African renaissance.” To this end, they summon Elijah Muhammad (the former leader of the Nation of Islam), or, for that matter, Malcolm X, who was his spiritual son for a while. Similarly, they never fail to mention the main Pan-Africanists of the Black continent—Kwame Nkrumah and Amílcar Cabral—or the warrior Shaka Zulu, who conquered a huge empire in southern Africa that was larger than France. But they will neglect to mention that the legendary warrior later became a despot responsible for the deaths of several million Africans during his tyrannical rule.

Most likely you’ll be surprised to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s name mentioned, a relentless advocate of nonviolence, because these tearful Blacks don’t think twice when it comes to distorting and amalgamating ideas and concepts that are in reality far more subtle and different than they are willing to admit.

“Black consciousness” is, when it comes down to it, a demonstration rather than a construction, so that one doesn’t have to expend too much energy in “making an assessment of black values,” as Frantz Fanon once wrote.² In some respects, this is tantamount to a pure and simple demolition of the man of color who, rather than focusing on the present, ends up being sidetracked in the meanders of a past encompassed by legends, myth, and above all else, “nostalgia.”

These same tearful Blacks are convinced that our very survival is premised on the annihilation of the White race or, at the very least, by reversing our historical roles. In their opinion, Whites should be made to feel, even for a few hours, what it means to be Black in this world. Yet, in their unconscious, as Fanon claimed, they have always harbored dreams of actually being White: “The black man wants to be like the white man? For the black man, there is but one destiny. And it is white. A long time ago the black man acknowledged the undeniable superiority of the white man, and all his endeavors aim at achieving a white existence.”³ In fact, the Martinican psychiatrist went on to ask: “Haven’t I got better things to do on this earth than avenge the Blacks of the seventeenth century?”⁴ And for those who continue to lament the Black continent’s bygone glory days, Fanon’s conclusion in Black Skin, White Masks remains more valid today than ever: “Above all, let there be no misunderstanding. We are convinced that it would be of enormous interest to discover a black literature or architecture from the third century before Christ. We would be overjoyed to learn of the existence of a correspondence between some black philosopher and Plato. But we can absolutely not see how this fact would change the life of eight-year-old kids working in the cane fields of Martinique.”⁵

My dear boy, the worst forms of intolerance always come from your own people, from those whose skin color is closest to your own. Fanaticism first rears its ugly head among those of the same origin, only later extending toward those of the other “races,” and with a virulence nourished by a spirit of vengeance.

I used to spend hours listening to the Black activists preaching on the Esplanade outside the Centre Pompidou when I was studying law in Paris during the nineties. Cheikh Anta Diop was regularly summoned in their speeches, although few among them had actually ever read his work. Convinced as they were of being disciples of the Senegalese historian—even though his thinking was based on science and the desire to better understand the Black continent—they were hell-bent on igniting a race war. Demagogic propagandists who had come too late now pressed White people to kneel and recognize Black civilization’s precedence. The more I thought about these arguments, the more I found their way of clinging to the primacy of origins annoying.

The challenge for you, my son, is to figure out what this “primacy” has to offer but also how it may be potentially limiting, since you must act in the present and think about your future as well as that of your own descendants. Tearful Africans claim they were here first. My response to them is: Good for you! And then I follow up with a question that usually derails them: Now what?

In France, where you were born and live, I can’t think of any “black consciousness” movement that has grabbed hold of the present, because our “activists” are still looking in the rear-view mirror. And in so doing, they have forged a union based on a mythical past rather than establishing something new based on everyday preoccupations. Hidden behind these factionalist ideologies lies an indirect appeal for pity for Black people. But the salvation of Black people is not to be found in commiseration or humanitarian aid. If that was all that was needed, well then, all the wretched of the earth would already have altered the course of history. It is no longer enough to claim to be Black or to shout it from the rooftops in order for four centuries of humiliation to flash through the other’s mind. It is no longer enough to hail from the Global South and demand assistance from the prosperous North. Because that assistance is nothing less than the surreptitious continuation of subjugation.

Furthermore, to say that one is Black doesn’t really mean much these days. As long as Blacks sit back waiting for salvation to come from commiseration, their only interlocutors with be their own brothers—more often than not overlooking the fact that their nations have been independent since the sixties, preferring instead to spew forth in the way of false prophets anointed to speak in the name of a Black community that doesn’t exist in France. And, when it comes down to it, on what grounds?

In my book Letter to Jimmy, I pointed out how Africans basically don’t know each other.⁶ Africa is so diverse and fragmented, and cultures are not automatically the same from one country to the next. Advocates of colonialism could very well argue that Europe made it possible for different populations on the African continent to communicate, since in order to understand one another, most Africans today use the languages they inherited from their former masters. Blacks living in France, in Europe even, are strangers to one other; they don’t have a shared consciousness founded on any kind of logic other than skin color, or a sense of belonging to the same continent or Black diaspora. Black Americans were at least able to develop such a consciousness over a long and tumultuous history. They became aware of the fact that the land on which they had ended up stranded and in chains would ultimately be the space in which they would have to fight for acceptance in order to finally become Americans. This is why the very idea of a Black community built on a past rather than on the lived experience on French soil, with the French people, is nothing else but a pipe dream welded together by regression and withdrawal. Some have advocated for establishing a community in France that would follow the example of Black Americans, but those folks are misguided, preferring to take a shortcut rather than consider how France is not the same. Their anemia, which has been simmering for a long time and become muddled with the hardships of daily life, has been handed down from one generation to the next. I wrote you this missive as a wake-up call, because I wouldn’t want you to fall into that trap. You were born here, your destiny is here, and you should not lose sight of that fact. Ask yourself what you bring to this country without expecting to receive any rewards in return. That is the nature of the world. Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Your Father.

2

A Negro in Paris

DURING THE SUMMER months, I like to work out in a gym over in the twelfth arrondissement, up toward the Place de la Nation. Admittedly, it’s a fairly unassuming place, but all the available equipment makes up for this. Unlike most of the facilities scattered all over the capital where folks often have to wait in line to use the machines, often going home frustrated, this place is much less crowded. The staff in the reception area are very lively and eager to sign you up with a personal trainer. At first, I found it hard to turn them down, and only a bit later when I let them know that someone was “taking care of me in the United States” did the manager give up, but not without adding:

“Ah! Those Americans! They’re always one step ahead! Everyone has a body trainer over there! If we mention their services here, people just think we’re trying to pull a fast one! Look at Jennifer Lopez’s or Beyoncé’s butts! Don’t come and tell me they don’t have specialists taking care of them! And take a look at some of our performers!”

The street level is reserved for cardio workouts and the first floor for body-building, and that’s where the fitness instructors do the rounds trying to sign up new customers. That’s also where some members, proud of the results they have achieved, now spend more time admiring themselves in the mirrors than actually working out. They wander around, shirtless, convinced they’re the bee’s knees. As soon as a woman comes into their vicinity, the competition intensifies. It’s down to who can do the most challenging exercise. And let’s not forget those who suddenly transform into altruists eager to help young women optimize their workout under the envious looks of their more timid rivals.

I get it: after having suffered so much, what greater reward than to show off the results? And as far as the owners are concerned, it’s free advertising . . .

One day, while I was busy trying to figure out how to use a new leg machine, a dark-skinned man came up to me. My first thought was that he was an employee coming to assist me. I was mistaken, since without so much as an opening greeting, he launched right in:

“Are you that Congolese guy I’ve seen a few times on TV talking about your novel? Aren’t you the one who wrote a story about a porcupine?”

“That’s me.”

“And what’s your name again?”

I introduced myself, but he didn’t seem convinced.

“No, the guy I’m talking about always wears a cap! If that’s you, then where’s your cap?”

“I don’t wear it when I’m working out, and . . .”

Now come on brother, don’t try and fool me! Where’s your cap?”

“It’s in my locker upstairs.”

He pondered the situation, clearly trying to find a way to catch me out.

“Okay then, so your cap is in your locker! But the real problem is that the Congolese writer lives in America! What on earth would he be doing in this place?”

Somewhat annoyed, I said:

“I can’t help it if you don’t believe me.”

“Come on now, cool it . . . Do you have your membership card on you?”

I got my card out of my pocket and the man almost snatched it out of my han...